Arachne’s Tuesday morning ghost banishing
Date: 2025-06-24 11:32
(Arachne’s Tuesday morning ghost banishing)
[Tue Jun 24 2025]
Colony Hill Graveyard/span
It is morning/span, about 100F(37C) degrees, and there are clear skies. The mist is heaviest At High and Darkwater/span
The oppressive heat shimmers off the weathered headstones of Colony Hill Graveyard as Arachne makes her way along the gravel path, sweat already beading on her forehead despite the early hour. The morning sun beats down mercilessly, turning the usually peaceful cemetery into a sweltering maze of stone and shadow.
A peculiar chill suddenly cuts through the stifling air near the older section of the grounds, where Victorian monuments stand in crooked rows. The temperature drop is so sharp it raises goosebumps on Arachne’s arms. From somewhere among the weathered granite markers comes the sound of frantic scribbling – pen scratching against paper with desperate urgency.
“No, no, that’s not right…” mutters a man’s voice, strained and agitated. “The Sumerian root suggests binding, but the hieroglyphs… they’re all wrong!”
Through the heat haze, a figure in a rumpled linen suit hunches over a notebook beside an ornate headstone covered in strange symbols. The man appears solid enough, but his edges seem to waver like a mirage, and the grass beneath his feet shows no impression of his weight. He looks up suddenly, wild-eyed and sweating profusely, his gaze fixing on Arachne with desperate hope.
“You! Can you see me? Please, I need help – I’ve made a terrible mistake with the translation!”
The heat is near unbearable as it shimmers off the weathered headstones of Colony Hill graveyard, cresting the hill and surveying the grounds beneath a hand cupped over her eyes. Sweat beads on Arachne’s brow, expression irritable, mouth slanted in quiet dissatisfaction a she works loose her cardigan from around her shoulders to tie the expensive cashmere around her waistline instead.
When the peculiar chill comes, stifling the air but providing her with relief, she welcomes the sudden plunge of temperature, reveling in it through mute appreciation as she weaves together a quick ward for herself through sigils etched into the bands of her wristwatch and bracelet.
She follows the sound of frantic scribbling, gray eyes catching quickly on the disheveled man in a rumpled, out-of-season linen suit. She can do nothing to speak, muted as she is, but palms out her iPhone to signal her desire to help him with the mess he’s made.
The ghostly professor’s eyes widen with relief as he sees Arachne approach, though confusion flickers across his spectral features when she produces her phone instead of speaking. He clutches his notebook tighter, pages filled with cramped handwriting in multiple scripts – some recognizable as Latin and Greek, others appearing far more ancient and alien.
“You can see me, thank goodness,” Professor Thornwick says, his voice carrying an odd echo despite the open air. “I am Professor Elias Thornwick of Windermere University. I fear I’ve become quite… stuck.” He gestures helplessly at the ornate headstone beside him, its surface carved with a bewildering array of symbols that seem to shift and writhe in the oppressive heat.
The temperature around the grave site drops another few degrees, creating an almost comfortable pocket of cool air that contrasts sharply with the blazing sun just feet away. Thornwick notices Arachne’s phone and nods eagerly.
“Ah, modern communication device – ingenious! I’ve been trapped here since 1924, you see. This accursed stone…” He points a trembling finger at the headstone. “I was translating the inscription when I accidentally activated some sort of binding ritual. The text is incomplete in my notes – I need to finish the translation to break free, or perhaps find another solution.”
The symbols on the headstone seem to pulse faintly, and Thornwick’s form flickers like a candle flame in wind. “Time grows short – I can feel myself fading. Can you help me complete this work?”
Arachne rounds her eyes in feigned interest, emphatically nodding her head along to Elias Thornwick’s ramblings. Her expression is one of polite interest, only cataloging relevance and importance to the symbols he’s carved onto the headstone. She crouches down, turning her iPhone sideways to spell out her intention to help.
Professor Thornwick leans forward eagerly as Arachne crouches beside the headstone, his spectral form casting no shadow despite the blazing sun. The carved symbols seem more pronounced up close – a mixture of wedge-shaped cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and strange pictographs that don’t match any known writing system. Some appear to have been carved recently over much older inscriptions, as if someone had deliberately layered multiple texts on the same stone.
“Excellent! You have such modern tools at your disposal,” Thornwick says, peering at her phone with fascination. “In my time, I had only lamplight and magnifying glasses.” He opens his notebook, revealing pages covered in meticulous drawings of the symbols alongside partial translations. “I managed to decipher roughly half before the binding took effect. The Sumerian portion speaks of ‘souls held fast’ and the Egyptian mentions ‘words of power spoken thrice.'”
The cool air around the grave grows noticeably colder, and frost begins forming on the grass despite the scorching heat elsewhere. Thornwick’s form becomes more solid, though his edges still waver.
“The troubling part is this section here,” he points to a series of angular symbols near the base of the stone. “These aren’t from any civilization I recognize, yet they seem to be the key binding element. Without understanding them, I cannot complete the reversal incantation.”
A faint humming sound emanates from the stone itself, barely audible but growing stronger.
Arachne presses her chin against softly curled knuckles, the Summer Monarch of the Illusium Court shameless in her AI-assisted Google search to help decipher th meanings of the hieroglyphs and everything, trying to fill in haps of her knowledge while Thornwick prattles on. The notable chill, and frost licking at the grass gives her brief pause, lips pursing in mild share of concern, before she quickly begins creating a warding circle around her and the tombstone with materials drawn from her bag of supplies. She turns her attention back to Thornwick, showing him her phone; What was the incantation meant to do?
Thornwick’s eyes light up as he reads Arachne’s question on the phone screen. He flips through several pages of his notebook, his spectral fingers leaving no smudges on the aged paper.
“Ah, that’s the crux of it all,” he says, his voice growing more animated despite his predicament. “According to my research, this was meant to be a containment ritual – designed to bind restless spirits to prevent them from wandering and causing harm to the living. The original occupant of this grave was apparently quite troublesome in death.”
As Arachne draws her warding circle with practiced precision, the frost around the headstone spreads further, creating an almost perfect ring of ice crystals that glisten in the brutal sunlight. Thornwick watches her work with academic fascination.
“But here’s where I made my fatal error,” he continues, tapping his notebook. “I spoke the binding words aloud while standing within the ritual space. Instead of containing the original spirit, the magic latched onto me – the living soul present during the incantation.”
The humming from the stone grows louder, and the strange pictographs near the base begin to glow with a faint, sickly green light. Thornwick’s form flickers more violently.
“Your modern research tools may succeed where my 1920s scholarship failed. The key lies in those unknown symbols – they appear to be the ‘release clause’ of the binding.”
Arachne turns her head to throw an incredulous look back at Thornwick when he reveals his fatal error. She steps out of the warding circle before its completed, then motions toward his notebook, stretching out a slender hand, fingers wiggling for the incantation he originally used.
Thornwick catches Arachne’s incredulous expression and has the grace to look sheepish, even in his spectral state. “Yes, well, hindsight and all that,” he mutters, adjusting his rumpled collar. “I was rather excited by the discovery – academic enthusiasm overrode common sense, I’m afraid.”
He hesitates when she reaches for his notebook, clutching it protectively against his chest. “I… I’m not certain that’s wise. The incantation is what trapped me here in the first place. Speaking it again might…” He trails off, looking uncertain.
The green glow from the mysterious symbols pulses brighter, and the humming takes on an almost musical quality – three distinct tones weaving together in an unsettling harmony. The frost ring around the headstone expands further, now encompassing most of Arachne’s incomplete warding circle.
“However,” Thornwick continues, his scholarly curiosity overcoming his caution, “if you believe you can reverse-engineer the binding from the original text…” He slowly extends the notebook toward her, though his spectral hand trembles. “The incantation begins on page forty-seven. But please, be extraordinarily careful with the pronunciation. Ancient languages have power when spoken in sacred spaces.”
The temperature drops another few degrees, and somewhere in the distance, a church bell tolls despite the early hour.
Arachne cuts a glance over a shoulder when the church bell tolls, taking it as an ominous omen that often signals danger impenitent. She works quickly through Thornwick’s notes, scanning over lines, words, and takes out her phone to simulantaneously begin attempting to piece together a new incantation from his collective work to correct the mistakes, then pulls out a fountain pen to contribute to his work, which takes her a good while, maybe an hour, but she pushes it back to Thornwick to read, underlining the IMPORTANCE of not repeating his mistakes, meant to set him free and give closure, while resolving the issue. It should. She’s confident, at least.
Thornwick takes the notebook with reverent care, his spectral fingers somehow able to turn the pages despite their ethereal nature. His eyes scan Arachne’s additions – modern linguistic analysis combined with his century-old scholarship. The green glow from the headstone pulses more rapidly as he reads, responding to the proximity of potential resolution.
“Brilliant work,” he breathes, though sweat still beads on his ghostly brow. “You’ve identified the reversal pattern I missed – the binding requires acknowledgment of the original intent before release can occur.” His form grows more solid as hope fills his voice. “And these corrections to my pronunciation notes… yes, I see where I went wrong with the Sumerian conjugation.”
The church bell tolls again, closer now, and the frost around the grave begins to crack and shift. Other headstones in the immediate vicinity start to emanate a faint chill, as if the supernatural energy is spreading.
Thornwick positions himself carefully outside the warding circle this time, notebook held at arm’s length. “If this works, I should finally be free to move on. If it fails…” He doesn’t finish the thought. Taking a deep breath he doesn’t need, he begins to speak the corrected incantation in measured, precise tones.
The ancient words roll off his tongue like thunder, and the headstone’s glow intensifies dramatically. The binding is responding.
Arachne presses her chin in her hand, a wary eye kept on the spread of magic that leaves her skin tingling, and a chill rolling down her spine. She stays vigilant while Thornwick rectifies his grave mistake that led to his entrapment in the afterlife, ready to intervene should things go awry.
The ancient words build to a crescendo as Thornwick speaks the final syllables of the corrected incantation. The headstone blazes with brilliant green light that cuts through the oppressive heat like a beacon. The frost ring shatters with a sound like breaking glass, sending crystalline fragments spiraling into the air where they dissolve into mist.
For a moment, everything goes perfectly still. Even the oppressive heat seems to pause.
Then the light from the headstone suddenly shifts from green to a warm, golden glow. Thornwick’s spectral form begins to solidify, becoming more real and present than he has appeared since Arachne first encountered him. The desperate, haunted look in his eyes fades, replaced by profound relief and gratitude.
“It’s working,” he whispers, looking down at his hands as they become fully corporeal for the first time in a century. “I can feel the binding releasing its hold.”
The golden light spreads outward from the headstone, washing over both Arachne and Thornwick. Where it touches, the supernatural chill dissipates, replaced by natural warmth. The humming from the stone transforms into something almost musical – a gentle, harmonious chord that seems to resonate with peace rather than entrapment.
Thornwick turns to Arachne, his form beginning to fade again, but this time with purpose rather than desperation. “Thank you. I can finally rest.”
Arachne grants Thornwick a rare, but genuine smile that warms her eyes, a single nod offering gracious acceptance of his gratitude. She presses her fingers to her lips, then to him, a farewell and parting, for now.
hot, peaceful, and decidedly mundane. A gentle breeze stirs the grass where frost had formed moments before, and somewhere in the distance, birds resume their morning songs.
Colony Hill Graveyard is quiet once more.
Arachne rises to her feet, her chance encounter with the spectral scholar complete, and heads off to the road.
As Arachne walks away from the now-peaceful grave site, the oppressive heat of the day reasserts itself with full force. The temperature climbs back to its sweltering peak, and the mysterious headstone appears ordinary once more – just another weathered monument among hundreds in the cemetery. The strange symbols that had glowed so brilliantly now look like nothing more than decorative carvings, their supernatural significance hidden from casual observation.
Behind her, the grass where Professor Thornwick had stood for nearly a century grows green and healthy, no longer marked by the supernatural chill that had preserved it in an eternal frost. A small plaque near the headstone, previously obscured by overgrown ivy, becomes visible in the shifting shadows – “Professor Elias Thornwick, 1889-1924, Devoted Scholar of Ancient Languages.”
The gravel path crunches beneath Arachne’s feet as she makes her way toward the cemetery gates. The wrought iron entrance stands open, welcoming her back to the world of the living where the heat shimmers off pavement and the concerns are decidedly more mundane than binding incantations and trapped souls.
Colony Hill Graveyard settles into the peaceful quiet it was always meant to have, its newest resident finally at rest.
Arachne wonders, truly, if the encounter is finished?
As Arachne pauses at the cemetery gates, a subtle wrongness tugs at her awareness. The oppressive heat feels different now – not just the natural swelter of a summer morning, but something more deliberate. Behind her, the peaceful birdsong falters and dies away entirely.
A new chill begins to emanate from deeper within the cemetery, not from Thornwick’s now-quiet grave, but from the older section where colonial-era headstones lean at crooked angles. The temperature drop carries with it the scent of damp earth and something else – something that has been disturbed after long rest.
From among the weathered stones comes a different voice, older and far more malevolent than Thornwick’s scholarly tones. It speaks in a language that predates English settlement, words that seem to claw at the air itself.
The binding ritual that trapped Thornwick had been designed to contain something. With his release, that original containment may have been compromised.
A shadow moves between the headstones where no person walks, and the grass begins to wither in a spreading circle around one particular grave – the very one Thornwick had been trying to keep bound for a century.
The iron gates behind Arachne creak ominously in the still air, though no wind stirs the leaves.
Arachne purses her lips faintly, glancing back over a shoulder as a lingering presence draws her attention before she can leave the graveyard properly. Robbed of voice, and irritated that there is still unfinished business in the oppressively hot cemetery, she reluctantly returns to settle the affairs. Reaching back, she reaches into her bag to draw out a gore-stained stake, one that once pierced her beating heart, waving it as an icon of life and death teetering on an edge to draw the malevolent force’s attention to her, taunting it.
The malevolent presence responds immediately to Arachne’s provocation. The withering grass spreads faster, creating a dead circle that expands outward from an ancient headstone so weathered its inscription is barely legible. The shadow between the graves coalesces into something more substantial – not quite human in shape, with limbs that bend at wrong angles and a face that shifts like smoke.
The entity’s attention fixes on the gore-stained stake with unmistakable hunger. When it speaks, the words scrape against reality itself, causing nearby headstones to crack and splinter.
“Blood… spilled… freely given…” The voice carries the weight of centuries, far older than Thornwick’s scholarly ghost. “You offer… what was taken… what binds…”
The temperature plummets so rapidly that frost forms on Arachne’s breath. The entity begins to move toward her with jerky, unnatural motions, leaving a trail of dead vegetation in its wake. Unlike Thornwick’s desperate but ultimately harmless spirit, this presence radiates genuine malice – the kind of force that the original binding ritual had been designed to contain.
The iron cemetery gates slam shut behind Arachne with a resounding clang, trapping her inside with whatever Thornwick’s release has inadvertently freed. The entity’s form grows more solid as it approaches, drawn by the promise of blood and violence the stake represents.
Arachne sucks in a sharp breath, gray eyes darkening as she tracks the steadily deepening shadow made manifest as it comes racing toward her. She spreads her stance wide as the iron cemetery gates encloses her in, quickly pressing the stake out toward it in offer, to feast upon the energy within, its engraved silver chains lighting up with a containment ritual already woven within its binding threads as it draws near, ready to trap it like a prey within her web.
The malevolent entity lunges forward with predatory eagerness, its smoky form solidifying as it reaches for the offered stake. The moment its twisted fingers make contact with the gore-stained wood, the silver chains blaze to life with brilliant white light that cuts through the supernatural darkness like a blade.
The creature’s triumphant shriek transforms into a howl of rage and confusion as the containment ritual activates. The chains snake around its form with impossible speed, binding limbs that shift and writhe in desperate attempts to escape. Where the silver touches, the entity’s smoky substance becomes solid and vulnerable.
“Trickery!” it snarls, its voice now muffled and strained. “You offer… then bind… like the scholar’s words…”
The stake pulses with contained energy, drawing the malevolent force inexorably inward. The withered circle of grass stops expanding and begins to slowly return to green as the entity’s influence is compressed and contained within the ritual focus. The temperature starts to normalize, though the air still carries a sharp metallic tang.
The creature’s form grows smaller and more compact as the binding tightens, its ancient malice compressed into the confines of Arachne’s carefully prepared trap. The iron gates creak open once more, no longer held shut by supernatural force.
The entity glares at Arachne with eyes like burning coals, now thoroughly contained but still seething with centuries of accumulated hatred.